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Intel Core i9-9900K

We kick things off with an overview of the mainstream 9th-gen CPUs, Intel’s refresh of the Core X high-end desktop chips, and the beastly unlocked, 28-core Xeon W-3175X, just to get everybody on the same page. If you want the speeds and feeds in black and white, be sure to hit the link above. After that, we get more nitty-gritty, discussing the raging controversy over Core i9-9900K gaming benchmarks published by testing firm Principled Technologies.

The testing was commissioned by Intel, but suffers from numerous critical testing methodology flaws that paint AMD’s Ryzen CPUs in an unreasonably bad light. Is it as big a deal as it sounds? Were the mistakes malice or ignorance?

We wrap things up with a discussion about Hyper-Threading, which is missing for the first time in a Core i7 chip with the Core i7-9700K. That means the eight core, eight-thread 9700K will have fewer total threads than its predecessor, which has six cores and twelve threads. Should you be worried that Hyper-Threading is seemingly now a luxury option?

What do we think of Intel’s decision to segment Core i7 like this? Tune in and find out, or read Gordon’s article dissecting the potential performance ramifications of the lack of Hyper-Threading in the Core i7-9700K.